Thursday, 04 December 2008

Sorry for the lack of blogging - as you know, sometimes real life gets in the way of online fun. But even though I am not writing much, I am still following the important stories. Here is one you should read from NW Republican.

No time for commentary - just read it and join in the comments over there.

Hopefully there will be more time to blog soon, but maybe not until after the holidays.

Sunday, 26 October 2008

As we all know, public schools are taking our children with their young skulls full of mush and indoctrinating them to believe Barack Obama is the new Messiah and liberal government is fair and just.

We must counter this.

Assume Obama wins. He will, as he has openly stated, raise taxes on "the rich." Your children, not being "the rich" nor paying taxes, can't really understand how this works. So show them.

Break out the Monopoly game. Make bad choices during play, so that it doesn't take long for you to have little or no Monopoly money, while the kids amass fortunes. Be sure to point out to the children how the choices you made were bad, and how you are broke because of your own foolishness. Then, announce the new rule that President Obama just signed a new "spread the wealth around" law and just take your kids' money from them. They will cry and say it isn't fair. Then, when they don't like the result, tell them that if they don't give up their money, then "the law" (better known as "Dad") will ground them, just as the I.R.S. will threaten to lock up real life tax cheats.

Once the lesson has sunk in, then tell them you have good news for them: a new Republican President has just beaten Obama, and is repealing the Obama tax plan, and implementing new tax cuts. Let them keep their money... and because of the economic stimulation created by lower taxes, let them double all their income for the rest of the game.

When the game is over, everyone has ice cream!

Next week, we'll go over redistribution of baseball cards when one child opens a pack to find All Stars, but another child opens a pack to find a bunch of losers...

Tuesday, 07 October 2008

That was the lamest 90 minutes of my life. No one learned anything, except that politicians in conventional debates can say absolutely nothing and get away with it. That, and America learned that Gwen Ifill is more entertaining than Tom Brokaw.

I have been saying since August that the Saddleback Forum was the most useful program for getting to know candidates on television that I have seen in my life. After tonight, I am convinced that traditional debates are useless and future elections should utilize the Warren method.

The time has come to abolish the Commission. Turn the final debate over to Rick Warren. Please.

RCP average has Obama up about 6. Some fairly reputable polls have him up by 7-9.

That is not good. BUT, considering some historical facts about pre-election polls and actual election results, it is not dire. At least, not yet.

Over the last several elections, polls have skewed towards the democrats. Look at exit polls in 2004 that showed Kerry winning by a large margin, for instance. So we can reasonably predict that actual election results will be somewhere from 2-4 points more favorable for McCain than pre-election polls suggest.

Another factor is the race factor: historically, minority candidates always do better in polls than at the ballot box. Some people just won't vote for a minority, but they would rather tell a pollster something different than expose their racism. So we can reasonably predict another 2-4 point shift for McCain.

Together, than means a possible 4-8 point shift. But the polls show a 6-9 point lead for Obama - and there is still a margin of error on top of that. So Obama might be as much 10-15 points ahead in the polls (of course, he might only 1-4 points up... tricky thing, those margins of error...).

What this means is:

The race is still wide open - but Obama is still holding a slight advantage.

Now comes the last historical factor: last-minute undecideds almost always break for the known quantity. In this case, the known quantity is McCain. People like status quo. Even when everyone is chanting about "change," the fact is, a lot of people would rather keep things comfortable than try something new. This is especially true when times are turbulent. Better to have the seasoned warhorse than they untried pony. McCain has been going down in the polls, but I think he hit bottom and the recent Palin debate has the GOP ticket moving back up. That means the trend will be for McCain to climb.

The questions that remain are: how high does he have to climb to ensure a victory, and will he make it?

It is not as bad as they are telling us, but it is still not good. McCain needs to deliver in his next two debates and hammer Obama hard with targeted advertising in battleground states. He needs to stay on offense, because Obama is much weaker defending.

Monday, 22 September 2008

While I am a true conservative with libertarian leanings, and Gordon Smith is pretty far from that, I have been saying for years that it is wrong for conservatives in Oregon to pile on Smith. Yes, he is much more moderate than we are. But our state is much more liberal than we are. Real conservatives don't fare so well here. We have a choice between "somewhat liberal" and "extremely liberal." Give me the somewhat over the extreme anyday.

This is not to say we shouldn't continue to elect real conservatives. On the contrary. But we need to pick our battles, and build from the ground up. We need to run good candidates for local elections first, and use their victories to build the farm team for statewide elections down the road. We can't do better than Gordon Smith because we have no better candidate. But perhaps Gordon will want to retire from the Senate in six years, or sooner (if we elect a GOP Governor in two years, there is a strong possibility of President McCain tapping Smith for a Cabinet post like Agriculture or the Interior). That means we need to focus on a few things here:

Re-elect Gordon Smith, so we don't get stuck with Jeff Merkley.

Re-elect Greg Walden, our only GOP Congressman (and an OK guy).

Re-elect Jason Atkinson to the State Senate and groom him for higher office.

Elect Rick Dancer Secretary of State.

Once we do these things, we can focus on 2010 and beyond, and gradually shift our alternative to socialism from "somewhat liberal" to conservative.